


Blood

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Blood, Dogs, Fallen Angels, Gen, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1300777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the path to redemption begins as nothing more than an undistinguished stretch of an ordinary road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Did I just turn a horrible prompt into something not entirely soul-crushing?
> 
> Is this soul-crushing?
> 
> I think I've lost my objectivity on the matter. Everything hurts.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"I have no use for you now. Go be your own angel for a while. Certainly you can do that much?"  
Metatron's expression was belittling and his voice annoyed. He was shooing Gadreel out like he was a cupid caught up in the works of soldiers.   
Still, the guardian stepped back, as unwilling as his movement was. This was better, _freedom_ was better, than another name scribbled upon a piece of paper as a death sentence to some soul he did not know. He didn't want to act as a reaper, and the blood of too many already stained his skin, still too fresh to be forgotten. As if feeling it there, Gadreel rubbed his hands together, eyes turned towards the bar's table.

"Where would I go?" he asked, not knowing how long the leash on him was.

"I'll find you," Metatron snapped back, "Just leave already, I can't stand your presence, I have  _work_ to do." 

A not-so-minor part of Gadreel wished to ask the scribe what in the heavens could his work here possibly be, and did it require a glass of whiskey while he was at it, but he knew better than to argue with him. It would lead to nothing if not further insults, so he could as well be on his way and make use of himself elsewhere. If Metatron truly had no argument to him being "his own angel", as he'd put it, then Gadreel assumed he could indeed do anything he wished to - even if that was contradictory to what Metatron needed him to do.  
On the other hand, he thought as he exited the building to a wet, cold street filled with the smell of spring's mud and the wet leather of people's shoes as well as the clear, sharp sounds of birds singing in the morning, perhaps this all was a test. Perhaps the other expected him to further their cause even when released of duty.   
  
Well, Metatron would be disappointed. Gadreel had no intention of playing to his schemes if he was not ordered to do so, as he'd by then multiple times showed by following directions so strictly he could have as well lacked imagination and ability to sum things up entirely. He wasn't stupid, but Metatron clearly thought he was, and nothing he would do would ever convince the angel otherwise.  
Therefore, he'd play his role. That was what his year in this world had taught him to do; to play roles. 

He stopped at a crossroads, shoes already dirtied by the ground and the smell of sewerage rising from beneath the ground. A car passed, showering his legs with a rain of small pebbles, but he didn't pay attention to it as he scanned the environment and wished he'd had a pair of wings to borrow for a quick one way flight anywhere else but here. His own wings twitched restlessly, uselessly, against his back and he stretched the other open to get grace surging through the damaged shape. The stretch felt warm and nice to a wing that had only very recently stopped dragging behind him; the other felt less badly wounded, if such an expression was allowed in reference to what was bare bones and loose ends from which grace leaked through.  
  
There was nowhere for him to go, he saw that quite clearly from where he stood, but the burn at his back informed him that he still longed to be that much further from Metatron. Even worse was the announcement that Metatron would _find_ him later: no part of him particularly wanted to be _found_ by the other.  
A stiff step took him onto the road and made him keep walking across. The thought of disappearing forever was like an itch at the bottom of his stomach and he couldn't shake it, hadn't for quite some time now; it was easy to see he was despised here, even more so than he'd ever been with the Winchesters. On the other hand, he'd made his choice and there was no going back now. The very idea of changing factions now made him feel uneasy as well - he was no traitor, but what was a soldier supposed to do when his services were far from appreciated?

 _His duties_ , Gadreel reminded himself, defeated.  
Certainly, however, he retained the right to perform as weakly as he desired as long as the one for whom he went to war treated him like a stain of filth in the grand design he'd prepared.

Along the street, there was a small café that Gadreel now passed - a woman was stepping in as he kept walking, and from inside, scents of baked goods and fresh coffee surged onto the street like a flood just waiting to be released. Someone was laughing inside; Gadreel cast a look at the window and saw a young woman, elbow on the table and legs crossed, toes touching the pantleg of a pleasantly-smiling man. She reached out to stroke his face and said something that the glass muffled, and the man laughed, lowering his face shyly towards his cup of coffee.  
It was ten in the morning, judging by the sun's position and the clock barely visible behind the counter from all the reflections cast upon the window through which Gadreel watched, and on a Saturday, people seemingly had nothing to do.  
For once, by accident, he seemed to fit in as he aimlessly wandered onwards on his way to no place in particular, as long as it was far from an assassination contract. 

As he crossed the next road, the angel found himself by a park. It cut his way, but since nothing was telling him to _not_ enter, he did just that. The rough sounds of wheels travelling the wet roads were soon left behind, replaced by the pleasant sounds of birds and wind in the trees. Traffic turned to a distant rumbling and this place, as ugly as it was in comparison, carried distinct resemblance to a certain garden Gadreel remembered like a part of himself, and the association suddenly made him feel at ease. The gravel on the path he walked was wet but not muddy, as the earth sucked the water away from its surface unlike cement did, and winter-weary grass was slowly raising to greet the approaching summer although it was still early for it to grow.  
Almost unnoticingly, the angel let his wings take some distance from his vessel, spreading them behind his body to get some resemblance of motion in them. He saw no potential threat here, nothing that would demand him to keep his grace as contained as it could get, and the knowledge of relative safety further increased the surprising sense of calm that was taking over him. 

A sign by a gentle downhill warned him with cartoonish, cutesy pictures that from this point on, dogs were allowed off leash; such a detail didn't much bother Gadreel, but he was curious to see how many people spent their day off in a wet park with animals instead of indoors, or doing something for their own benefit otherwise.  
The first person he saw was an old man with a small dog of long hair; the canine stood on his lap and licked at his face, dirty paws leaving stains on his dark grey pants. Around the curve of the path the angel followed, it seemed like he'd suddenly entered another kind of a park entirely. At least ten dogs, from small to as big as their owners, were rushing happily upon the green. One golden-coloured dog hit the ground heavy as a black one pounced it like a predator attacking prey, teeth nipping gently at the back of its neck as its four long limbs kept punching the black one repeatedly in a playful manner. Elsewhere, a small black dog with pointy ears and a strange, bearded face was chasing a brown dog four times its size, and everywhere around them stood the people who were watching over them, making sure the games proceeded in good spirits.  
There were seven that seemed to own the strange-looking pack of animals, and some five that were simply walking around, two of them hand in hand and three either jogging or on a break from doing so. 

The commotion here was overwhelming, not because there was so much of it - Gadreel had by now gotten more than used to the usual business of any city or town in this country - but because it was so free. None of these people, nor the animals they'd chosen to take with them, was going anywhere, and they were quite content like that. Unlike him, they weren't looking for something to do, but rather let go and allowed themselves to be completely lost in their purposeless existence, trusting they'd soon enough have plenty to do again. A part of Gadreel wished he could have just let go like that as well, but a much bigger portion of him was terrified of it. These people lived for a blink of an eye here - how could they _not_ be trying to live every second of it to the benefit of a larger picture? Angels lived forever, or at least until a blade undid them, and not a single moment of their lives was wasted like this.   
Except, Gadreel noted to himself, here he was now - purposelessly standing at the side of a park path, staring at dogs and people and wondering about the usefulness of it all. Wasn't that the exact same thing these people were doing? Wasn't he just as pointlessly wasting time? 

A white, old retriever jogged from nowhere to sniff at his leg. Rather than looking at it, Gadreel's eyes sought out its owner: a very old woman some thirty feet from them was watching carefully, clutching her woolly violet coat. Worry radiated from her, and when Gadreel finally turned to take note of the dog, he thought he understood why: the animal at his feet carried multiple old scars beneath the fur and had now healed but once painfully broken bones in places of its body that spoke of an unspeakable past. It wasn't the old age that worried the woman, it was the fact that out of all of those dogs that could have come over to examine the strange tall man standing so motionlessly further from the rest, it had been hers.  
Gadreel didn't know what to do, or if he should have turned away and left the park by the time the woman had chosen to walk to him. In the end, he did nothing - the retriever settled down by his feet, long pink tongue hanging from its mouth from between the sharp white teeth of a predator, but it certainly appeared to be nothing if not tame and friendly.

"'cuse me, sir," the woman panted as she hurried up the hill, "That's my dog, Lilly; she hasn't let a man near her ever before, but look at her now. You must be very special. Is she bothering you?"

The angel stood stiff and still and tried to find the words to answer. Then, as if suddenly regaining his knowledge of the language, he shook his head and trapped a sentence with his tongue.  
"Not at all," he heard himself saying in a tone of shock, "She's only resting here. It's not a problem."  
Slowly, out of a whim and perhaps simply to escape the woman's keen examination, Gadreel knelt down beside the animal and offered his hand to its trembling wet nose.  
Lilly sniffed his hand through, finally deciding the information was good and licked at him before turning to clean her nose in turn, and then, as if to make the situation more unusual than it already was, she rolled on her back and offered her chest up. It took a moment for Gadreel to realise it wasn't so much a sign of submission as it was an invitation or perhaps a demand for affection; his fingers felt stiff and untrained as he reached to rub at the soft fur. 

"My, my," the woman next to them muttered, "Lord knows what that dog is thinking."

As his fingertips pushed aside the dog's fur and circled the warmth of its body underneath, Gadreel tried to catch up on what was going on: he couldn't seem to be able to, however. Twenty minutes earlier he'd left the bar, left Metatron, and now he was here petting a domesticated animal, unable to pull himself from the situation but too much of a stranger in it to stay.  
In an attempt to disengage from the anxiety building up inside him, the angel turned his attention to the body of the dog's and wondered if there was anything he could help with, anything to reward her of her trust and perhaps make her less scared as a result. He found, although he was not surprised, that she suffered of joint pains and stiffness much like any other old creature likely would, and his lips bent to a small concerned smile as he tried to release just enough of his powers to take away that pain without the owner taking any notice of the miracle.  
Still, Lilly was just a dog; at the feel of health pouring into her worn limbs she responded with a burst of positive energy, climbing up and _charging_ away to chase her friends that she'd earlier been too slow to keep up with. Gadreel felt his lips parting as he watched the dog go, the air around him suddenly freezing as he waited for the reaction of the old woman. 

Her hand, trembling and cold, landed upon his shoulders - she was once again clutching her chest as Gadreel stood up, and appeared to have no words, but her surprise and happiness radiated like a halo from her, and her pale, veiny fingers held the tall male very tightly even after the length of her arm had grown short and her palm had slid down upon his arm instead.  
She looked at him, then at her dog again and opened her mouth to let out a breath but no voice.  
Entirely overwhelmed by this strange contact, Gadreel merely flashed a scared smile at her and attempted to move, but she held him tighter and a sound fell from between her lips as she tried to find the words.   
"You must be an angel," she stated then and finally let go of him, "You made her _young_ again." 

The scared smile on the older was still there, as if he didn't know how to take it off anymore.  
"I can't take away her years," he replied clumsily in a lost tone of voice. 

The woman turned her clear eyes to him again and smiled widely.  
"Youth is not in the years, it's in the soul," she said and nodded as if to agree with herself, "And somehow, you reminded her of that. You'll be in my prayers, young man. Thank you." 

Gadreel remained still when she stepped away from him, following her dog to where the others were. Her step seemed lighter and she moved like a burden had been lifted from her - like she'd become as young as she perceived her pet to be.  
Out of all things Gadreel had done since the fall, big and small alike, this seemed like the one thing he'd gotten right, and he couldn't shake the feeling of having changed something for the better here, all by accident - like he'd finally done something that mattered by heeding his own instinct. 

When he turned to follow another path, he didn't feel so lost anymore. Wherever this walk would take him, it would definitely be better than the place he'd left behind.

 

*

 

The large white building reigned the opposite side of the road like a mighty king on his throne. The letters above a large gate leading to what appeared to be a parking lot for the building's employees announced that it was a hospital, and the hundreds of windows on its side faced towards the park that Gadreel had just a step ago left behind. Cars passed on the wide stretch that separated him from the building, but the path he'd followed had brought him here and it seemed clear that that was where he was supposed to go. What he'd do there, Gadreel had no idea, but he'd already been to a hospital once and it seemed like a kind of an obvious place to end up in on this walk that had taken a strange turn from aimless to one filled with purpose that was yet to be revealed.  
  
So he crossed, together with a few other people most of whom were talking on their phones, and kept walking until he found the other entrance to the hospital that lead to the doors of the main building. He considered going there, but it was crowded and he had no business inside, so instead, he followed the path that led inbetween the different sections. Trees, thick and healthy, grew there, surrounding a small, almost secluded green island separating the white concrete mountain from the smaller, greyish building behind it, and in the middle of that island was a playground.  
At first glance, it seemed to be empty, but then from behind the thick trunk of the tree that grew closest to the playground's fence, Gadreel saw a bright white light flicker as if the moon had fallen from the sky and settled on the small round jungle gym. He turned, surprised by the flash, towards the playground and stopped. Now that he knew what he was seeing, the light soon faded, revealing a small boy sitting on the ropes like a fly trapped in a spider's web, huddled and sickly and wounded not because of any earthly injury but because an angel was trapped inside his skin.

Instinctively, Gadreel took a step back. He considered leaving, but something kept him there, rooting him to the path that had once more turned to loose gravel much like the park's path earlier. Somehow, his chest felt tight at the thought of leaving and a pressure grew inside him that told him this was exactly where he was supposed to be and that leaving would be a great mistake and an insult to the reason that had driven him all the way here.  
So, still nervous and unwilling, he took the first step towards the playground and started walking, and as the distance grew smaller, he knew he'd made the right decision. It wasn't some divine intent that had brought him here: the angel, whoever he was, was calling for help, and he'd been the closest to catch the distress signal. 

It was clear to see why the boy was at the hospital. His skin was melting off. He probably hadn't been allowed out on the playground, but the angel causing the condition knew well that no doctor would be able to help, and he'd come here to melt with the boy instead. Perhaps like the park had reminded Gadreel of Eden, this little playground resembled the heaven the other angel longed to return to, but where Gadreel had felt at ease in his surroundings, this brother of his was frozen with fear. He'd probably been in the boy since the fall - he'd probably been afraid the whole time too.  
His wings trembled visibly when Gadreel pushed open the playground gate and stepped inside, never once taking his eyes off the younger angel. The gate creaked, catching the attention of the other's. The boy's head raised fast, revealing the bleeding burns on his face and the flash of blue that crossed behind his eyes, announcing that the angel inside him was close to attacking. He already held the blade: it rested uneasy across his knees that were covered in jeans so blue that they probably painted his skin with the dye. His small feet were wrapped in black and white sneakers, the rubber heads of which had turned dirty with dried mud. 

"No need to fear," Gadreel greeted him, stopping a good distance from him to allow him the higher, tactically safer position on the jungle gym without making him feel trapped there, "I'm not here to harm you. I heard you call."

The angel wiped his bleeding face, only tearing more skin from it. Fresh drops of crimson ran down his cheek and gathered at the small chin of the child's, and it was clear that while the angel was trying almost frantically to hold the boy together, he was already exhausted from the effort and had been entirely unable to heal the damage he'd sustained in the fall, much less any of that which he'd later inflicted upon himself by straining to remain envesseled in the body that couldn't possibly stand to contain him.  
It wasn't stupidity, that much was clear to Gadreel. The angel was simply too afraid to move, like a cornered and wounded animal ready to lash out at any moment with nowhere to go but through. If anything, it was the saddest thing the older had witnessed: not only was the fear killing the angel, it was destroying the vessel and as such, killing the child. 

"What's your name?" Gadreel asked him, trying to ease the other away from the state of all-consuming fear that kept him from reason. 

The boy clutched his blade harder - he brought his small hands over the sharp end as well, fingers wrapping around the razor-sharp triblade like he was oblivious to the damage it caused. The pain for the child inside must have been unbearable, even if the angel was past the point of noticing. Amongst the blood that escaped the torn flesh ran small streams of faint-glowing grace, and the boy's fist glowed with light that was so pale and weak Gadreel realised it wouldn't take long for the seraph to fall apart entirely.  
  
Then, surprisingly, the other responded.  
"What's yours?" he asked.  
The voice in which he spoke was rough and dry like sand, broken as if death had already come to the body it stemmed from, and so faint it could have carried from a distant nightmare rather than the real world.  
Gadreel knew it was probably the way the angel wanted things to be, as if believing that as long as he kept away from reality, he could believe it was not the one he belonged to. With a past of seemingly endless torture, Gadreel himself was no stranger to self-deception.  
  
Hesitation burned in the stomach of the older's; the presented question was the one he couldn't answer to. Revealing his identity would have achieved nothing good, as every angel, even those that had never seen him, knew him and his story and hated and feared him.   
"I'm your brother," he simply chose to say instead, "I'm here to help." 

The angel struggled to become smaller, as if there was anything tinier than a sick child burning from the inside out.  
"No one can help me," he muttered into his bloodied arm.  
"No one can help me. God - oh God, no one can help us, this is the end."  
His body trembled, wings shedding one of the last feathers they had remaining, and he gasped for air.  
"This is the end," he whispered again and hid his face in the safe space created by his arms and knees. 

Gadreel breathed out slowly before taking a step towards the jungle gym. The sand beneath his feet made soft sounds with each move he made, counting the distance until none remained and he wrapped his fingers around the wooden bones of the structure. The boy didn't move but he was shivering constantly now, and Gadreel was certain the boy knew that he was climbing to his safe place, yet even if he'd attack, Gadreel had realised the other angel would be too weak to even bury that blade into him, much less deep enough to kill.  
Gentle wind passed them here and the evergreen trees whispered into it, rustling and creaking and shedding dry needles from their branches. 

"This is not the end," Gadreel said, palms spreading over the swaying ropes.  
He pressed his knee onto the ends of the web opposite from the boy and leaned back to share some of his weight with the frame of the gym - the last thing he wanted was for the web to break under the weight of an adult, but it seemed to be attached very firmly, and eventually he dared to land on it with his whole body. 

The boy was looking at him, but was doing so very secretively; the glimmer of his moist, large eyes was almost unnoticeable from the small space he was staring through. The child had the features of the people native to Latin America, and he couldn't be older than ten, perhaps only eight years of age. Gadreel wondered how far he'd been taken, and if his parents had witnessed the state he was in. No parent ever should, he realised. No loved one should ever deteriorate to this.  
He'd never been in a vessel before the fall, but he knew the rules like they were imprinted within him somewhere: a child was never to be used no matter the potential, the gain or the price of not doing so. Clearly, this boy was born to a bloodline, but his body was far too young and frail to be able to even potentially contain a seraph - much less a wounded one that needed a strong vessel to recover. Whether the angel had chosen him for a vessel in distress or had simply gotten dragged inside like Gadreel knew had happened to some, he should have never stayed this long. Yet the blame did not lie with him either; in a state like this, he was just as sick as the boy had come to be, and the damage of his grace paled in comparison to the damage of his mind. 

"Let me help you."  
The older offered his hand towards the boy, reaching to the middle of the gym - the boy stared back at him, body tense and the fist around the weapon's handle turning pale with the tightening grip. He cast a cautious look at the intruder and considered: Gadreel could see on the child's face the locked up expression as the angel struggled to accept.  
The older offered a careful smile, trying his best to appear honest and open, to become the embodiment of what the angel in front of him needed the most. Slowly, he saw that it was working, as the fist along the triblade's sharp end loosened and fell apart at the same time as the boy's shoulders relaxed enough to no longer press against his ears. Blood ran in streams down the palm and the wrist of the boy's as he opened his hand and reached for Gadreel, but he didn't have enough courage to come the whole way, and his arm settled to lean upon his knee instead. Drops of blood turned from running down his arm to return now that gravity pulled them the other way down, and one by one trickled along his fingers to fall down onto the sand below. 

"You need to take another vessel. Are you strong enough to do that?"  
Gadreel doubted it; the seraph was beyond the point of breaking, and would need the help of another to leave without shattering in the process. That was why he'd called out for anyone to hear: inside, he knew what he had to do. The problem was finding the courage to do so.  
The thoughts of Metatron had faded from Gadreel's mind, as was the case with the memories of deaths that had not that long ago still corrupted the hand he was now holding out to help the wounded one in front of him. It was as if the incident at the dog park had cleansed him for this purpose, and only that memory now still held in him at this moment.  
  
The very thought of abandoning the vessel seemed to terrify the other angel, and he tensed again, hand pulling few inches back from Gadreel. The older breathed in and cast a look away from the boy, trying to find the right words to gain his trust.  
"Why do I not know you?" the weak, raspy voice asked him, and he turned back in surprise at the sound of it, "Who are you? Why won't you tell me?" 

Gadreel felt his vessel reacting to the nervousness inside him that he tried hard to not show. His smile didn't suffer, it didn't even waver, however.  
"I could ask the same questions," he spoke calmly with a small huff escaping to top the words.  
His hand fell back to the web and took a firm hold of the ropes.  
"But if you do not wish to introduce yourself, I trust you still; I will not hold back from doing my best to do what I can for you." 

"Remiel. My name is Remiel. I've seen you - I do not know where. It unsettles me." 

It clearly wasn't the only thing that unsettled Remiel, but the other's name was too well known to Gadreel and he realised now that he too knew the angel in front of him. It was surprising that he'd not recognised him from the beginning: he'd thought the faces of those that had imprisoned him would have been etched into his memory, but it had taken a name to allow him to make the connection.  
Taken aback, he felt the tip of his tongue passing across his dry-feeling lips and by the time he caught himself from the midst of this visible nervous reaction it was much too late to stop. Tense and worried, he sat back and thought through his options. It seemed inevitable that Remiel would eventually recognise him in turn, even if he'd not give him a name or if he'd attempt to use another's. An angel's memory was far from weak and he'd only retained his anonymity this long because Remiel had not taken his hand. A contact that close would have inevitably allowed their graces to connect as well and like that, Remiel would have known him anywhere, in any form, and clearly he was not damaged beyond caring.  
And only one of them was armed. 

Instinctively Gadreel's eyes scanned the white sky above them, but it remained silent as it always did, if not counting for the rain that had already started some moments earlier and continued as a light, mist-like drizzle that barely affected the two angels on the jungle gym.  
The situation seemed absurd enough.   
  
Then, suddenly, Gadreel caught up with himself.  
Remiel was dying. He was the one with near full powers in his use. That blade was as good as a blunt stick against him in the hands of a bleeding young human child controlled by an angel too weak to even leave his own vessel. 

"Remiel," he finally repeated, sliding back on his knees towards the middle of the web.  
A weary chuckle escaped him as he stretched his hand back to invite the younger to grab it.  
"I'm Gadreel." 

The reaction was worth witnessing; Remiel's eyes flew open and even in his weakened state he jumped back, fingers of the bleeding hand grabbing the web in fear as he tried to push himself on his feet but failed, the ropes being difficult to hold balance on even for Gadreel.  
His back hit the wooden frame of the gym's and now he had to feel like he truly was cornered. Gadreel stayed exactly where he was, where he'd been the whole time, and kept his hand out with a patient expression on his features that perfectly masked the storm that he was holding inside.  
His mind was concentrating upon something Abner had said to him when informed of the death of Thaddeus in Gadreel's hands. Gadreel had been so relived, so proud of his work, but Abner - the one Thaddeus had truly tormented - had turned uneasy and regretful at the notion.  
'I wish you hadn't done that,' he'd said. 

Gadreel closed his eyes and turned his head down, the rain turning heavier with larger drops landing on his hair and exposed neck.  
"The fall," his mute lips followed the memory of the other's voice, "Is our second chance."

 _We can forget our old hates.  
_ _Who we were._  

When he looked up again, Remiel was still there, and the wound in his palm was bleeding heavier now that it was stretched over the rope.  
Drawing in a long breath, Gadreel moved forwards and, dodging a shaky and badly aimed stab of the blade, disarmed the seraph without sparing a single conscious thought to it. His fingers bent around the handle and held it firmly in his grip before he brought it to plain view on his side and, once he was certain Remiel was looking, allowed it to slip from his grasp and fall through the web onto the moist sand beneath them.  
The other didn't seem to be able to trust his eyes: he glanced frantically from Gadreel's hand to the blade on the ground, the child vessel's features full of disbelief. Then, at the same time as the rain turned into a downpour, his eyes finally met Gadreel's again. 

"Come, now. You're wearing thin," the older said with a sigh, fingers finally touching the burnt, dry skin of the vessel's arm.  
  
Remiel mouthed words but seemed to be unable to voice them. He shook and swallowed before finally making his choice. His fingers joined with Gadreel's and bent firmly around his hand.  
"Forgive me," he breathed out. 

Gadreel nodded.  
"We'll meet again," he simply said with a crooked smile, "Now's not the time to settle scores from our past." 

It was clear Remiel still couldn't believe that the convict that he'd personally led to the dungeons was now there, free and able to end him with no fear of consequences falling upon him in turn, but choosing to instead save his life, and the irony did not escape Gadreel either. At the same time, he felt like he'd finally understood what Abner had meant. As power surged through his palm into the other angel to assist his departure, he felt much better than when he'd pierced Thaddeus with the torturer's own cursed blade and twisted it in the wound, watching life escape him as his grace broke at contact with the heavenly weapon. This felt like flying, like allowing a great burden to fall from his shoulders. Gadreel felt like forgiveness had taken away half the time he'd spent buried in that cold, dark cell into which Remiel had convicted him for the rest of eternity. And when the light faded along with the presence of the freed seraph, leaving behind a wet, bleeding and unconscious little boy whose body fell limp into Gadreel's arms, he knew what it felt like to be young again.

"You're safe now," he heard himself say to the child as he lifted him against his chest and started to make his way back down, "I'll make sure you won't have a scar to remind you of him."


End file.
